IRA suspect convicted of 1989 attack on British base
A former member of the IRA was convicted today for his role in a 1989 attack on a British military base in Germany and sentenced to six years in jail.
A German state court in Celle found Leonard Joseph Hardy, aged 45, from Antrim, guilty on several counts of attempted murder and of deliberately causing an explosion.
Hardy, who was arrested in August in a hotel in the Spanish resort city of Torremolinos and did not fight extradition to Germany in January, has admitted being a member of an IRA “Active Service Unit” that attacked the British Army’s Quebec barracks in Osnabruck on June 19, 1989.
He was not expected to appeal.
Four others implicated in the attack were already convicted of attempted murder before a German court in 1995 and jailed for between nine and 12 years.
Prosecutors said the five wanted to detonate several bombs at the barracks, but were disturbed by a workman as they tried to lay the charges. Only one of the bombs exploded, causing damage but, hurting no one.
Hardy refused to say whether others were involved in the attack or where the group obtained an estimated 265 pounds of military-grade plastic explosives.
